Food pilgrimage: Hidemi Sugino in Tokyo

This was one of the foodie highlights of my trip, visiting Hidemi Sugino's patisserie shop in Tokyo. Hidemi is the King of the mousse cake, some of his creations are so delicate that they won't allow you to take the creations out of the shop and you have to eat them there.

When you cut into the cake there are layers of light sponge, mousse and sometimes a fruit puree or jelly. You aren't supposed to take photo's in his store so I just managed to grab a quick one of the cakes I bought.

Hidemi won the 1991 the 'Nobel Prize of pastry', which is actually the gold medal of France's own prestigious 'Coupe du Monde de la pâtisserie' and in 2015 was awarded title of Asia's Best Pastry Chef.

There are often long queues out of the door of his shop in Kyobashi but we were lucky and it was quiet on the damp weekday morning that we went.

Before I found out about Hidemi I hadn't realised that you could find such exquisite patisseries in Japan. They were light and fresh and beautiful, I absolutely loved them. I tried a lemon meringue tart and a strawberry mousse cake. Of course I wanted to recreate them when I got home which led me on a search for a recipe in English and a course to help me make entremets and I will share posts about these soon.